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Arts Council Launches

International Programme

for the Arts

May 6th 2003

The Arts Council launched a major new funding programme to promote the arts from Northern Ireland abroad in partnership with the Department of Culture, Arts & Leisure and the British Council Northern Ireland.

The launch took place in Clifton House, 2 North Queen Street, Belfast and brought together the key partners in international arts promotion in Northern Ireland.

The Arts Council has worked for many years with the British Council, whose hundreds of offices around the world are an invaluable asset for artists and arts organisations planning a step up into international activity.

The Arts Council has also funded Visiting Arts, the newly-independent organisation to promote and facilitate foreign arts in the UK and under whose auspices more than 20 cultural attachés are currently on a fact-finding visit to Belfast.

The Department of Culture, Arts & Leisure is committed, through its policy document Face to Face, to fostering more effective and comprehensive promotion of Northern Ireland arts abroad and is the parent department of the Arts Council.

Speakers at the launch included Brian Walker (Chairman, Arts Council of Northern Ireland) and Roisín McDonough (CEO, Arts Council).

Funding measures announced were:

  • £100,000 under Arts & Artists Abroad, of which £50,000 is contributed by DCAL to encompass promotion in Great Britain;
  • £20,000 under the Arts & Disability Networking Abroad, of which £10,000 is contributed by the Office of the First Minister/Deputy First Minister as part of the European Year of People with Disabilities;
  • £10,000 under the International Artists’ Profile Scheme to enable artists to create promotional portfolios of their work, for example on CD-ROM ;
  • £35,000 for Travel Awards to enable artists to bring their work abroad;
  • more than £75,000 invested in Artists’ Residencies in Canada, USA and Italy, including £25,000 to facilitate Self-Arranged Residencies.

In attendance at the event were cultural attachés from Czech Republic, Tuvalu, Finland, Indonesia, Peru, Argentina, Greece, Romania, Austria, Ukraine, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Israel, Cuba, Chile, Dominican Republic and Bolivia.